You Took My Life And Made It Beautiful
by M. Pond
Summary: Meredith and Derek's marriage through the years.


**A/N: This is the first piece of fic I've written for Grey's in almost three years and it's also the first time in quite a while that I've felt nervous about sharing something I've written. But I am posting it because this is what happens when you leave me alone with my laptop and a plot bunny. **

* * *

_"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." _-Mignon McLaughlin

* * *

_year one_

Their post-it hangs above the bed in a frame that Meredith picks up from some second hand store one Saturday afternoon. It stands as a permanent reminder of what they mean to each other. They don't wear rings or have a wedding photo beside the bed. But that tiny scrap of blue paper means so much more than that. Life has always seemed so determined to make sure that they don't work out, and he views it as nothing short of a miracle that he's finally able to call Meredith his wife.

Married life isn't perfect though. He knows that when he looks back on their first year of marriage, his memories will be filled with funerals, divided loyalties and staring down the barrel of a gun. But in amongst all of that there's the two of them adjusting to what it means to be married. Their flaws are even more noticeable now they are part of their forever. He regularly wakes up to Meredith grumbling about how much of the bathroom counter is cluttered with his mass of hair products. And he comes home from one shift to find the kitchen filled with acrid black smoke and Meredith desperately fanning at a pan full of something that may have once been pasta. Despite it having been months since he moved in, she struggles with the idea of him always being there in her space and he finds himself getting irritated by tiny things like the way she can leave a half full mug of coffee sitting on the bedside table for days.

They still fight as well and he supposes they wouldn't be them if they didn't. They both say things they don't mean and even attempts to control his temper can't stop him from throwing hurtful insults at her that he wishes he could take back the moment they're out there. But the difference with these fights from the ones they had before is that he no longer fears that the right combination of words will be enough for them to fall apart. There may be silence and angry stares but neither of them run. And the silences don't last as long as they once did. It becomes rare for them to fall asleep angry, and make-up sex really is even better once you're married.

Overall, their first year of marriage is good. He tries to learn from the mistakes he made with Addison because he doesn't think he'd survive losing Meredith. Being a third year resident means her schedule isn't quite so hectic anymore and he does his best to avoid scheduling surgeries and meetings that will clash with the time she has off. They make it a rule that they try and have at least one night a week where they both finish by six and, even if all they can manage is eating dinner in front of the television, it's better than not seeing each other at all. The year may be filled with some of the worst moments either of them has ever faced but their marriage is good, really good.

_year six_

Time is even more sacred and scarce now they've swapped out the craziness of Meredith's residency for the demands of having two children under the age of five. Their lives are no longer their own and the small amount of time they have away from the hospital is taken up by play dates, school admission interviews, and trips to the park. The floor of his car is cluttered with forgotten toys and books, and his old scrub caps and scrubs are regularly commandeered by Zola for her games of dress up.

Zola is so like him, and if anyone is evidence that biology only counts for so much then it's her. He's always been aware of how talkative a person he is but it's become even more noticeable now he has a daughter who could give him a run for his money in the chattiness stakes. Whenever it's his turn to pick her up from daycare, the whole drive back to the house is filled with Zola's never-ending monologue on what's happened that day. And she's become his fishing companion too. Every Sunday morning they leave Meredith and Chris sleeping and sneak out to the dock. His daughter sits beside him with her pink fishing pole and squeals with excitement whenever she feels a fish tugging on it.

If Zola is his twin then Chris is Meredith's. They're the quiet two of the family. Chris said his first word, mama, a week after his first birthday, but he's a boy of few words. He talks when he wants something but otherwise he's happy to sit quietly and simply take everything in. He's the supportive one as well, just like his mother. On what would have been Mark's forty-fifth birthday, Derek sits in the den with a glass of scotch in his hand and another one on the table for Mark. He doesn't cry or yell; he simply sits there. And then suddenly Chris is toddling up and wrapping his chubby little arms tightly around his father's legs. He holds his son close and swallows the lump in his throat.

He's wanted to be a dad for years but he knows that Meredith didn't envision this kind of life for herself until he intruded into hers. And he sees her nervousness sometimes like when they have a meeting with the principal of the best elementary school in Seattle or when she gets roped into hosting a joint birthday party for Zola and one of the other young girls in daycare. However, she may not always see it but she excels at being a parent. She would do anything for their children and he wishes she could see how brilliant a mother she is. He knows she still harbours fears of becoming her own mother but the way she rushes to put Zola and Chris' new artwork on their already crowded fridge and hates going to work when they are sick means he can't even begin to entertain a scenario in which Meredith becomes like Ellis.

Their marriage is stronger than ever but it takes work. Their scheduled night off is now a far stricter rule than it once was. They hire a babysitter, he books a table somewhere nice, and she digs out a dress and heels. There are nights where they're both exhausted and want nothing more than the comfort of their bed but they drag themselves out into the city to get to have those few magical hours a week where they don't have to be mom and dad or Drs Shepherd and Grey. They flirt and laugh and he still manages to make her blush with his inappropriate comments. It's rather ironic that they go on far more dates now they're married than they ever did when they were actually dating.

The fights are still present too but they've shifted now. They can't yell and slam doors with two young children in the house. So instead there are harsh whispers and issues that fester for far longer than they should. She glares at him as she talks Chris into eating his breakfast and he ignores her at work. And while they once would have done everything to avoid going to bed angry, now there are nights where he comes home from work to a closed bedroom door and a pillow and blanket on the couch. The tension builds until it reaches breaking point. They've become experts at conveying anger in hushed voices in the privacy of their bedroom. They argue until there's nothing left to say and then they move on. That's new for them. They've both been skilled at harbouring hurt feelings for longer than is healthy but now, when they kiss and make up, the problem is left in the past.

The truth is that he loves being married to Meredith. The fact that this almost wasn't his life seems insane because he can't imagine anything except for this. She still pages him to the on-call room when their shifts are slow and manages to get them arrested for public indecency after one of their date nights. They go to New York for Christmas for the first time and, even with all her fears and worries, she slips right into the craziness of a Shepherd family Christmas. They send out holiday cards and dress up for Halloween. The kids clamber into their bed during thunderstorms and there are nights where he comes home to find Meredith fast asleep beside Zola with a book open on her lap. And it's in moments like that that he realises his life is pretty perfect.

_year eleven_

He gets offered Chief of Surgery again and he turns it down without a second thought. His love for his job is as strong as it was twenty years ago and the urge for something more isn't there. And it's not just about lying on the catwalk with his own blood coating his hands. It's the memories of the never-ending nights filled with paperwork and of the responsibility to make decisions that he hated making and people hated him for making. He became a surgeon to save lives and being chief took that away from him. When he tells Meredith his decision, he expects her to be angry with him for making such a momentous decision without consulting her. They're a team and they don't decide something this important without talking it through. But she simply nods, tells him that it's fine, and fills him in on her surgery from earlier. However, that night she rests her head on his chest, listening to the sound of his heart beating, and he knows she's remembering fighting to keep him alive and begging him not to die. So he holds her too and tells her over and over that he loves her until she falls asleep.

That's one of the better moments in their eleventh year of marriage.

He has no idea when it starts. It feels like they're in the middle of a crumbling marriage within the blink of an eye. Their date night falls by the wayside because she's becoming a force to be reckoned with in general surgery and being a Harper Avery winner means that he's more in demand than ever before. And then there's Chris' karate lessons and Zola's gym classes and dance recitals. They have parent-teacher conferences and homework to help with and cakes to bake for the fundraiser and no, Meredith can't just buy them from the store, because she did that last time and Derek wasn't the one having to face the judgemental stay at home moms. So things like dates and on-call room visits slip down their list of priorities until they're not even thought about let alone a part of their lives.

They get lazy and busy and forget that marriage requires work. There are mornings where he doesn't kiss her goodbye and nights where she falls asleep without telling him she loves him. She tells him Valentine's Day is pointless and he listens, and they often have conversations where they're not even listening to each other. It's as if they're out of sync and don't know how to find their rhythm again. And maybe that would have been survivable but then Bailey is made Chief and there's a new general attending. He's smart and talented and every hospital in the country must have been fighting over him. He's handsome and so charming that he wins over the entire hospital by the end of his first week. The interns swoon over him and fight to be on his service. And that doesn't bother Derek. What does bother him is that he can't help but notice how close him and Meredith become. They scrub in on surgeries together, co-author a paper together and share private jokes in staff meetings. He tries not to be jealous, he really does, but that little voice starts to pipe up every time she mentions his name. He's not an insecure man but his fiftieth birthday is only a few months away and he finds himself looking in the mirror and wondering when he got this old. The grey in his hair is no longer restricted to that one streak and there seem to be new wrinkles on his face every day. And maybe the big five-O wouldn't be so damaging to his ego if his wife wasn't closer to forty than fifty and her new best friend didn't remind him of himself a decade ago.

So the tension and irritation and jealousy simmer and the distance between them keeps on growing. And then one night the dam breaks. One of them makes some innocent comment that the other misconstrues and it starts. They have a fight, a terrible one. They yell and scream and dredge up things that shouldn't matter anymore. All the fights they have been too busy to have suddenly happen at once, and the whole thing spirals out of control so fast that he's not even sure what they're arguing about anymore. The problem with knowing each other better than anybody else is that they know exactly how to hurt each other most. She knows all of his insecurities and he knows hers. He snarls and scoffs and treats her so horribly that he hates himself when he looks back on it. They hurl cruel words at each other and he can't remember the last time he saw such hatred in his wife's eyes. In the end he storms out, slamming the front door behind him, and spends the night sleeping on the couch in his office. And then he comes home the next day to an empty house and a note on the fridge saying that she's taken the kids and will be staying at Cristina's for a while.

The months that follow are the worst in their marriage. She comes home after three days but the distance and hatred are still there. They fight and snap and any happiness is just a show for Zola and Chris who are old enough to pick up on the fact that everything isn't okay. They go to a marriage counsellor and he can't help but remember the last time he went through marriage counselling and how it ended. Every week they spend two hours with a woman who sits and judges every aspect of their marriage. Sometimes it feels like they're making progress but other times they talk about separation and it seems like a startlingly real possibility. They talk about potential custody arrangements and the division of assets and he wonders if he's really about to lose the woman he fought so hard for.

Somehow they make it through though. It's not like it is in the movies where everything is magically okay again but he wakes up one morning filled with a determination to survive this. He cuts down his hours at work and focuses on being a better husband. He carves out time for date night again and it's awkward at first but they slowly remember how to talk to each other. Then she surprises him for his fiftieth birthday by flying Carolyn out to care for Zola and Chris while they go to Sonoma. It's their forty-eight uninterrupted hours even if it's twenty years later than planned. And as they make love for the first time in months and she tells him just how much she loves him, he wishes he could erase the months of jealousy and insecurity and distance. But he promises that he will do better from now on because they are forever and he's not going to give up on that.

_year twenty_

He watches her sometimes as she hunts for her keys or struggles to remember the day of the week. He's always tried to push their possible future to the back of his mind but she's fifty now and it terrifies him that at any point she could start to forget their life together. The rare moments when she brings it up are filled with talk about how they'll face it if they need to, and he knows that she's right, that there's no point always living in fear, but there are days when it's hard not to worry that he's going to have to watch the love of his life slip away from him. So he watches her quietly as she fumbles in her bag for the keys that are in her hand and he pretends not to know that she's started a journal recalling stories from medical school and residency.

Zola and Chris seem to have grown up in the blink of an eye. He can still easily recall Zola as that baby who he could hold with one hand and who lit up when he walked into the room. Now she's off to Yale in the fall and the idea of her living on a different coast terrifies him. She's become so independent lately and it pains him to realise that his little girl is now a confident, bright young woman who doesn't need him as much anymore. They're all taking a trip to Africa in the summer because she has questions they can't answer and Meredith can understand wanting to know who you are and where you come from. He's trying not to think about it as the last holiday they'll all take together but he remembers what life in college was like. He had no interest in going to the Cape with his mom and Amy and Lizzie once he was living in Maine. So he's clingy and needlessly overprotective. One night he catches Meredith telling Zola to let him be because he's just struggling to let go of her childhood. And to his daughter's credit, she lets him drag her out to the lake with him every Sunday even though there are plenty of things she would rather be doing. She sits there in the quiet with him, and the little squeal of excitement she lets out when she catches a fish lets him know she's still his little girl.

While Zola takes to high school life easily, Chris struggles. He's scrawny for his age just like Derek was and being quiet and studious never got anyone very far in the social hierarchy that dominates high school. He wishes that he could protect his son from the hell of being a teenager but reassurances about popularity not mattering in the real world don't help all that much when you're the last one picked for gym class. The only thing he can think to do is to tell his son about the people who should be there to help him through. When Chris turns fifteen, he takes him fishing and tells him story after story about his two namesakes. He's shared stories about his father and Mark with Chris and Zola before, just like Meredith has done with Lexie and George, but this time he tells his son everything he can think of. Suddenly it feels painfully important that his son know everything there is to know about his grandfather and uncle. Maybe it's because he's the age Derek was when he lost his father or maybe it's because his mother dying two years ago has made him startlingly aware of the fact that they don't have forever. He talks about Mark defending him from the jeers he got about being a band geek, and his father refusing to let him turn down the chance to join the year above's bio class just because Derek was scared of what his classmates would say. If two of the most important men in Derek's life can't be here to help his son then the least he can do is tell Chris what they would say and do if they were.

The end of his career is in sight and that's hard for him to swallow. He's still got a good few years left in him but the end of his time as a surgeon is painfully near and he hates that. Tiny things that he once took for granted now have a lot more meaning. He cherishes their shared car rides into work and their lunches in the cafeteria. Work isn't as crazy and all-consuming now he's viewed as something of a dinosaur in his field, and he likes finding time in his day to watch Meredith in surgery or to work quietly alongside her in his office. There's a comfort in the way he clings to their little routines. The hospital has always been their second home, the place that's defined so many major moments in their relationship. So he appreciates everything a little bit more because he can count on one hand the number of years he has left working with his wife.

She is his best friend and he is hers. They watch baseball games together on the weekend and drink beer and bet on the scores. There are Sunday mornings where she is willing to sacrifice her lie-in in favour of sitting next to him on the dock and skimming through medical journals as he fishes. She's finally brought him around to the beauty of takeaway pizza and he manages to drag her out on a run with him once a month. They communicate in half-sentences, shared memories, and codes that make no sense to anybody except the two of them. They talk about complete rubbish and laugh over jokes that are only funny because of that one thing happened on that one family holiday twelve years ago. And when she's in the shower one morning and feels a small lump in her right breast, it is him that she calls rather than Cristina.

The days spent waiting for those biopsy results are some of the worst of his life. It is as if he spends every minute feeling nauseous over the agonising wait to find out if he's going to lose her. One night he finds her sobbing quietly on the bathroom floor, a blanket shoved under the door in an attempt to muffle the sound, and he holds her as she cries over all the moments she might miss. The reassurances that there is no point talking about what ifs until they know the results catch in his throat and the tears are streaming down his cheeks too. They sit on the bathroom floor and cry because they've always defied the odds and felt invincible. They've survived bombs and drownings and shootings and plane crashes. It's hard to make it through all those things and not feel like you can survive anything, that death will never touch you. But now there's one tiny lump than could bring their whole world crumbling down.

It turns out the lump is benign and he's never found such relief from four little words before. Chris is away at summer camp and Zola is off in Miami spending time with Sofia so they book time off work and fly to Paris for two weeks. They walk along the Seine and visit the museums and eat rich pastries and enjoy their first holiday that's just the two of them in forever. They've got so used to being a family but it'll be back to being the two of them once Chris leaves for college in a couple of years and he wants to make the most of that. He starts thinking about trips he wants them to take and he's a little bit in awe of the fact that he's still so excited about the future of his marriage after twenty years.

_year thirty_

Retirement doesn't sit well with him. He always thought he would enjoy it but it turns out that inactivity bores him to tears. Maybe it's the comedown after spending more than half his life living according to a pager or the fact that nothing compares to holding someone's life in his hands. Whatever the reason, he struggles to no longer wake up at five in the morning and to not automatically respond to the beeping of a pager. Their fridge is full of trout and Meredith forces him to start tossing them back because they can't possibly eat as many fish as he catches. He re-reads Hemingway and falls in love with Hardy who he never had much time for in high school. One evening Sofia rings the house in tears and he talks to her about her father and tries to give her the advice that Mark would have given her. He locks himself in his office and writes down story after story about Mark's childhood. The envelope is full of yellow legal paper containing his messy scrawl, and he mails it to Sofia with a picture of him and Mark in the fourth grade. Callie may be able to tell her daughter about the man Mark was but he's the only one who can tell her about the little boy who convinced him to camp out in the tree house and who sat with him every night as he cried over his father.

But all those things only keep him busy for a couple of months. Boredom begins to creep in and he's honestly surprised that he lasts as long as he does before signing up for a series of guest lectures at Washington University. That becomes his routine. Meredith continues to operate, her legacy now so concrete that any comparisons to her mother's work are a thing of the past, and he potters around the house until boredom strikes. Then he lectures. A lot of the time it's at Washington or Berkley and he can be back home by the time Meredith is finished at the hospital. But it's hard to say no to Harvard and Yale so there are nights where he sleeps in strange hotels and it's almost as if they're back in the early years of their marriage when one of them would be on call all night.

He's still just as nuts about his wife after all this time. He relishes having time to simply look at her and he adores the laughter lines around her eyes and the grey hairs that she tries to colour away. They tell the story of their life together and all the things they've made it through. Getting older suits her in a way that he hadn't envisioned and he wonders if it's normal to be this in love with someone for this long. He had expected their intimacy to fall by the wayside at some point. It isn't that his love for her is any less than it was thirty years ago but they're both a lot older now and it seemed like an inevitable eventuality in their marriage. But it doesn't happen. Sure his libido isn't what it once was and the bendy thing in the shower is a thing of the past because he's almost seventy and he wakes up with a new ache or pain every day. But his wife can still turn him on with a simple look and he's as crazy about her now as he was when she was kissing him in elevators as an intern. They've both come to appreciate the beauty of finally living alone and they take full advantage of not having to worry about interruptions. After one incredibly embarrassing incident involving Chris surprising them with a trip home from grad school, their children now always make sure to call the moment they arrive in Seattle and to knock rather than using their keys when they arrive at the house.

Their fights have tapered off. It's not that their flaws have suddenly disappeared. She remains the messiest person he knows and he's still as much of a health nut as he was in his thirties. The difference now is that they have reached the point where neither of them are bothered by them. They accept each other warts and all because thirty years of marriage will do that to you. And, if he's being honest, he finds it strangely endearing that his wife still can't be bothered to take her coffee mug downstairs or to put away her clothes at the end of the day. So their fights are less like fights and more like banter. They tease and rib and poke fun at things that might once have led to them yelling at each other.

At their thirtieth anniversary party, Cristina confides in him that she had never expected them to last when they first started out. He laughs and tells her that she made that pretty clear way back when but he also knows she's right. On paper Meredith and him should have fallen apart long ago before marriage and babies were even in the picture. But somehow he got lucky, and he gets to stand beside his wife with a champagne glass in his hand and share more than thirty years of memories with his friends and family. He watches his son bow his head in embarrassment as he shares the story of when Chris was three and decided that he was going to marry Meredith and therefore threw a tantrum every time Derek got within three feet of her. He laughs along with everyone else as his wife reminds them all about his terrible pick-up lines and cheesy flirting. And he wishes he could go back and tell his younger self, the one making foolish mistakes that he'll kick himself for later, that everything will work out and that he'll have the future he always dreamed of.

_year thirty-nine_

Joint retirement is the first time in their marriage that they're spending time together with barely any distractions. Meredith takes over from him as the guest lecturer in the family but she spends more time in her office writing her next book than she does travelling to various colleges. So they slowly learn how to be just them without the demands of young children or flourishing medical careers to tear their attention away. It's another new step in their marriage because being with someone twenty-four seven is surprisingly different when you're no longer able to divide that time into work and home.

They develop a daily routine that's comfortable and probably terribly mundane to anybody that isn't them. An arduous battle against years of conditioning has left them able to sleep in until long after the sun has risen. They drink coffee out on the deck and trade sections of the newspaper. Meredith writes and he fishes. He reads biographies and she plans a re-decoration for one of the empty bedrooms. Sometimes he plays golf and sometimes she gardens. It's quiet and slow and a massive change from the madness that has always dominated their lives. But it makes them happy. They potter around their house and go to bed in the afternoon. They walk around their land and explore Seattle. They watch old movies and talk until long after the sun has set. They grow old together.

Zola is in D.C. while Chris is in Chicago and Derek remembers how little he used to fly home for visits once he left New York. But their children do their best and it's rare they go more than three months without one of the two coming home. Sometimes they come by themselves and sometimes they bring husbands, wives, and grandchildren. Those visits are his favourite. He loves having the house filled with the noise that can only come from a loud and loving family. When all of them are there, it reminds him so much of his own childhood, back when his father was still alive, and that's incredibly comforting. Christmas Eve is the best of all because there's nothing more magical than spending it with your family. They all spread out through the living room and Zola and Chris squabble over the remote and whether they should watch Home Alone or It's a Wonderful Life. Even though they're long out of childhood and have families of their own now, it's as if being back in the family home regresses them twenty or thirty years. He sits on the sofa with Meredith leant against him and his granddaughter on his lap and he wishes moments like this would never end. And when she cries in bed that night, silent tears falling onto her pillow, he holds her because he knows that she's spent her entire life terrified that nights like this would never happen for her. She saw a future where she didn't recognise her children and where he was a stranger to her, not one where she helps Charlotte and Josh put out cookies for Santa and rocks her four-month-old grandson to sleep. And he's so thankful that she gets to have this because this is the future he always saw for them and it's as amazing as he hoped it would be.

_year fifty_

When you fall in love with somebody, you envision a future for the two of you. You think about the trips you want to take, the holidays you might spend with each other's families, and the ways you could propose. You imagine your wedding day and the day you hold your child for the first time. You look forward to birthdays and anniversaries and all the momentous milestones to come. You see a whole lifetime. But there's also the part that no one likes to think about, the bit that doesn't fit into the concept of happily ever after. Because, if you manage to defy the odds and stay together, then you have to face the one thing that is inevitable.

He doesn't know how to do this. Delivering bad news is a part of the job, and he can easily recall having to tell patients and their families that there was nothing more he could do. But now he's on the other side of the conversation and he's not sure what he's meant to do. He holds Meredith's hand in his own and listens as the doctor tells him that they've exhausted every option and that, best case scenario, he's got six months left. He nods but it's as if all this is happening to somebody else.

He's always wanted to be the one to go first but now it's his reality and he finds himself hating their age gap and his weak heart. He has no idea how he can leave her behind and he doesn't want to. The years have been good to him and he knows he's lived a long and full life but he's selfish and there hasn't been enough time. All those years haven't been enough. And suddenly he's filled with a level of regret he hasn't felt in a long time. He finds himself desperately wishing he could claw back the months he wasted with Addison and Rose. He wants a way to undo the time he spent hating her when she got Zola taken away and those months when the children were little and their fights were so bad that he kept a divorce lawyer's card beside the phone in his office. He wants more time and it's not fair that that's the one thing he can't have.

She finds any excuse she can to touch him and to spend time with him. Her hands absent-mindedly run through his hair as they sit next to each other at breakfast and she is the big spoon when they sleep. She holds his hand as they walk around the garden and rests her head on his shoulder as he watches television. It's as if she's trying to cram as much intimacy into these final months as she possibly can. He's always been the one who hovers in time of crisis but these days it's rare for her to be anywhere but at his side. Even when he's simply dosing in the den, she'll be right next to him reading a book or writing an e-mail to Cristina. She kisses him all the time and tells him that she loves him more than she ever has before. And he reciprocates her words every single time because they're both painfully aware of the fact that they're almost out of time to say them.

When she sleeps, he quietly watches her and tries to drink in every tiny detail about her. She is just as beautiful to him now as she was that night in the bar and he still feels exceptionally blessed that he was the guy she chose to spend her life with. The idea of leaving her on her own terrifies him though, and he knows that she is just as scared even though she fights to be strong for him. Whenever she has been hurt or sad before, he has been able to comfort her. His job is to be the one who holds her when she cries. They've faced so many tragedies in their lives and he has always been there to catch her as she falls apart. He hugs her, lets her soak his shirt with her tears, and hopes that he can help the pain fade just a little. Except this time he won't be there to try and take the pain away.

The goal he sets for himself is their fiftieth anniversary. It's not the hundred and ten years he so desperately hoped for but fifty years of being married to Meredith Grey is something he once would never have thought possible. He has good days and bad days but that date pushes him on. There are days where he is too weak to even get out of bed and he hates feeling like he's trapped inside this rapidly failing body. But there are also days where he can go as far as taking the ferry across the water to explore the city with his grandchildren. Those are the days that give him the energy to keep on fighting. His health may not allow him to live another two decades but he'll do everything he can to have a few more months with the love of his life.

_year fifty-one_

He dies a week after their fiftieth anniversary.

She wakes up most mornings and takes a minute to remember that he's not there. She expects to roll over and see him lying next to her or to hear him clattering around in the kitchen. And every time she remembers that he's not going to suddenly walk into their bedroom, it's like she's lost him all over again. There are days where she is strong enough to push that thought to the back of her mind and to get up and get on with her day. But other times it cripples her. Those are the days where she can't stop herself from remembering how she held him as he struggled to breathe and said 'I love you' over and over until her throat was hoarse. She tortures herself with the memory of how she pressed a kiss to his lips and, when she pulled away, the light from his eyes had vanished and he was gone. That's when she can't do anything except cry into her pillow and wonder if it'll ever stop hurting.

She still buys coffee ice-cream during her weekly shop even though she can't stand the stuff and there isn't a single morning where she wakes up on his side of the bed. She yells at Chris' wife when she casually mentions donating the shelf full of Clash records to the hospital's jumble sale and she breaks down in tears when she finds his old watch shoved between the sofa cushions. She refuses to clear out his side of the closet and she leaves his shoes lined up by the front door. She grieves.

Sometimes, on her very darkest of days, she wishes she had inherited her mother's disease. Because maybe all of this wouldn't be quite so unbearable if she believed she was still a resident and that Derek would appear at any minute. But most of the time she's thankful that she's stayed remarkably sharp for someone her age. Her memories are full of Derek and she's starting to turn to them without feeling the crushing pain of not having him in her present. It's been harder than she ever imagined to be in a world where she is alive and Derek is not but she's slowly learning how to do it as the months pass.

It's hard to fill her days now it's her alone in this big house but she does her best. She knows that both Zola and Chris are waiting for to her to sell it but she can't because it's their dream house and she's not ready for it to become someone else's. It may be the place where Derek died in her arms but it's also a home filled with more memories than she can count. She can't let it go. So she potters around a house that's too big for only her and learns to be by herself again. Her family helps and she pretends to believe Zola when she says she's moved back to Seattle because the job in the Governor's office is too good to turn down. Chris calls the house every Tuesday evening and she happily spends an hour listening to her five-year-old granddaughter who is just as chatty as her grandfather was. She spends the weekends with her grandchildren and it's wonderful to have laughter and joy in the house for a little while.

Her favourite time of the week though is Thursday afternoon. It's tiring for her to take the ferry to the mainland followed by a taxi ride through the city but she does it every week. She does it because she loves nothing more than sitting by Derek's grave and talking to him. She tells him about Noah's teenage rebellions and swears she can hear him laughing. And she can easily envision his proud smile as she shares how Charlotte is considering majoring in neuroscience. She rambles about the Jets' latest game, the new developments in neuro, and whether she should hire someone to repaint the kitchen. She tells him all the things she would if he was actually here with her.

Her grief doesn't destroy her and her loneliness doesn't kill her. She takes comfort in the belief that she'll see him again one day and she's overwhelmed by a rush of love whenever she sees something of him in their children and grandchildren. She keeps going and she lives.

Derek is gone.

And, somehow, she survives.

Because it's the only thing she can do.


End file.
